What Classical Music Are You Listening To Tonight?

[bart]

Originally Posted by cma29

Here is one of the winners...

Smetana:
String Quartet No. 1 in E minor 'From My Life'
String Quartet No. 2 in D minor
Pavel Haas Quartet



Super intense music and playing. I can see why these guys were selected.

Listened for the second time to this.
Indeed a winner on all accounts.

[bart]

Originally Posted by bart

John Sheppard - Media Vita
Stile Antico




This is heavenly music.
Polyphony at its best.
Stile Antico is one of the top ensembles of the genre.

Listening to this again.
An absolute favourite here in the house!

[ehoove]

A bit of Mono:
Haydn - Cello Concerto
Boccherini - Cello Concerto
Janos Starker
Philharmonia Orchestra
Carlo Maria Giulini Cond.
Wonderful mono recording from Angel Records, Superb Play!
Angel Records 35725 (mono)
Regards,
Jim

[ehoove]

Still in a mono mood:
The Art of Dennis Brain
Beethoven, Mozart, Dittersdorf, Haydn, Schumann and Dukas
Wonderful French Horn Play with some cuts spectacular and others obviously dated.
Seraphim Records 60040 (1966) Recordings from 1944-1953
Regards,
Jim

[Toccata]

This 7-disc set arrived today. I started with the Fantasy in C Op.17. Nice, very nice.

[bart]

Telemann - 12 fantasies for viola solo
Ori Kam



The musician did the transcriptions from the violin solo pieces himself and it works wonderfully!
Very nice album.

[cma29]

I also got from Presto Classical this new SACD release...

Beethoven:
Symphony No. 3 in E flat major, Op. 55 'Eroica'
Coriolan Overture, Op. 62
Le Concert des Nations, Jordi Savall



As I've written many times here, Savall's Eroica is one of my favorite interpretations of anything by anyone. This is an SACD remaster of the magnificent 1994 Auvidis Fontalis release. This redo slightly improves on the details of the previous recording, but I would say the improvement is marginal - kind of hard to top such a great original recording. The good news is that this SACD makes this essential recording widely available again as the original has been out of print for a while.

The booklet included with the SACD describes the story behind the actual recording. Savall says that the session started at 6 pm with a lengthy process of adjustment and balancing with two pair of stereo microphones. To achieve the "desired sound balance" took until 11 pm so the first actual takes of the Eroica movements took place after midnight with the Marcia Funebre recorded after 7:30 am the same morning. Savall says they had never played the Funeral March with such drama and emotion. So they pulled an all-nighter recording these pieces. This story makes sense because you can hear some roughness in the playing, perhaps from the musicians being weary-eyed playing at 4 am, but in my view that slight jaggedness enhances the impact of the period performance.

Savall says that even though the recording took place in 1994 he set it aside for 3 years so he would have a more objective idea of what he had achieved. In 1997 he listened to the recording and decided to release it.

Here is the July 1997 Gramophone review of the original release by Richard Osborne:

There is a real sense of burgeoning excitement at the start of Savall’s performance; and the sound of the orchestra really does conjure up the sense of one being transported back to some dusky Viennese concert room c1805 where the musicians are as dangerous a crew as the militias roaming the mud-filled streets outside. Yet as the musical arguments begin to multiply and deepen, so the performance gets more garbled. For all Savall’s skill in moulding and modifying the pulse, there’s a jauntiness about parts of the first movement development section which muddles and trivializes the music.

Again, in the Marcia funebre, the Savall performance is astonishing for the mood it conjures. The drum (calf skin head, hard sticks) is fierce and seductive, an instrument of war that suggests also the soft thud of death. Savall’s brass are similarly remarkable, at once brazen and mellow-sounding. The horn section alone – Thomas Muller, Raul Diaz and Javier Bonet – deserves an award for the way the players colour and characterize this astonishing music.

There is no disguising the fact that Savall’s thinking about tempo is controversial. It is all very modern: post-modern, even. (After Savall, conductors like Norrington and Gardiner sound distressingly ‘safe’.) It is typical of Savall that though he conducts very quick, very earthy, very exciting accounts of the Eroica’s Scherzo (those horns again!) and finale, he still slows up pretty massively for the finale’s oboe-led Poco andante at bar 348. It is a performance, none the less, that I shall hang to for the sonic profile alone. The Auvidis recording is first-rate: warm and immediate.

[bart]

Originally Posted by cma29

I also got from Presto Classical this new SACD release...

Beethoven:
Symphony No. 3 in E flat major, Op. 55 'Eroica'
Coriolan Overture, Op. 62
Le Concert des Nations, Jordi Savall



As I've written many times here, Savall's Eroica is one of my favorite interpretations of anything by anyone. This is an SACD remaster of the magnificent 1994 Auvidis Fontalis release. This redo slightly improves on the details of the previous recording, but I would say the improvement is marginal - kind of hard to top such a great original recording. The good news is that this SACD makes this essential recording widely available again as the original has been out of print for a while.

The booklet included with the SACD describes the story behind the actual recording. Savall says that the session started at 6 pm with a lengthy process of adjustment and balancing with two pair of stereo microphones. To achieve the "desired sound balance" took until 11 pm so the first actual takes of the Eroica movements took place after midnight with the Marcia Funebre recorded after 7:30 am the same morning. Savall says they had never played the Funeral March with such drama and emotion. So they pulled an all-nighter recording these pieces. This story makes sense because you can hear some roughness in the playing, perhaps from the musicians being weary-eyed playing at 4 am, but in my view that slight jaggedness enhances the impact of the period performance.

Savall says that even though the recording took place in 1994 he set it aside for 3 years so he would have a more objective idea of what he had achieved. In 1997 he listened to the recording and decided to release it.

Here is the July 1997 Gramophone review of the original release by Richard Osborne:

Carlos, thank you for your review!
I'll be able to listen to my copy this weekend.

[bart]

Schubert - Impromptus
Radu Lupu



We can only imagine what could have been composed if Schubert had lived as long as for example Haydn...
These are simply wonderful pieces.

[cma29]

Originally Posted by bart

Carlos, thank you for your review!
I'll be able to listen to my copy this weekend.

Excellent, Bart. I hope you enjoy it. I recommend you listen to it a little bit louder than your usual setting.